(Bloomberg) -- A judge sharply criticized Elon Musk for not properly turning over text messages that could be evidence in Twitter Inc.’s lawsuit seeking to force the billionaire to consummate his proposed $44 billion buyout of the social-media platform.
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Delaware Chancery Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick said in a Wednesday ruling that there there were “glaring deficiencies” in how Musk and his lawyers responded to Twitter’s request for text messages he and top aide Jared Birchall sent and received about the proposed deal and his subsequent effort to withdraw from it. She ordered the men to turn over phone records about their texts.
“Third parties produced text messages with Musk that Musk himself did not produce,” she said. Some of the exchanges he produced also had obvious gaps.
McCormick noted that Musk produced two texts sent to him 18 minutes apart on June 17 by Robert Steel of Perella Weinberg. Steel first asked a question and then subsequently texted, “Ok. Got it...” The second text clearly indicated that Musk replied to the first, the judge said.
“Assuming that Musk’s response was not telepathic, one would expect some evidence of it in defendants’ document production,” McCormick wrote. “But defendants provided none by the deadline for substantially completing document discovery.”
Earlier today, McCormick concluded Musk’s lawyers could amend counterclaims filed in the Twitter case with whistle-blower claims from a former company executive the billionaire contends bolster his reasons for walking away from the deal. But the judge also denied Musk’s request to push back an Oct. 17 trial in the case.
The case is Twitter v. Musk, 22-0613, Delaware Chancery Court (Wilmington)
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